I love reviewing the blog posts I’ve starred in Google Reader or sent to Instapaper to create my weekly list of favorites posts for the Friday Rerun so I thought compiling a list of what I thought were the best posts of 2009 would be a breeze – but it wasn’t easy! It took me three days to share my favorite posts from this year – about the writing life, the craft of writing and what it means to be creative – and here they are, compiled into a single post. Thank you to the writers who encouraged, inspired and taught me something this past year.

5 Ways to Be a Writer When You’re Not Writing by Alison Wells on Head Above Water

13 Tips for Actually Getting Some Writing Done – a guest post by Gretchen Rubin on Christina Baker Kline’s A Writing Life

The second simplicity of a bowl of cherries by Emma Darwin on This Itch of Writing 

15 Common Writing Fears You Need to Face by Suzannah Freeman on Write it Sideways

50 Things a Writer Shouldn’t Do from Three Guys One Book 

Writing: the Fantasy and the Reality by Elizabeth Craigs on Mystery Writing is Murder

FAILURE IS GOOD FOR YOU: how practice novels helped me get published by Justine Musk on Tribal Writer 

Dealing with Dark Places: Writing and Self Doubt by Dan Holloway on The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes 

“I’m a Writer.” - How to Say it With Confidence by Jennifer Blanchard at Procrastinating Writers

Remove These Phrases from Your Writing Life by Jane Friedman on There are No Rules

10 Things I’ve Learned by Toni McGee Causey on Murderati

Ideas, Ideas, Ideas by Shai Coggins on Studio Notes 

Real Creativity and the Pains of Fantasy Withdrawal by Ken Roberts on Mildly Creative 

Stimulating the Imagination Through Constraints by Michele & Robert Root-Bernstein on Imagine That! (a Psychology Today blog)

Build a Bridge Between Who You Were and Who You Are – a guest post by Sean Platt on Writer to Done

9 Possible Ways That Writing Changes Things by Joanna Young on Confident Writing 

Authors: 5 Ways You Can Be Your Own Alchemist by Joanna Penn on The Creative Penn

How I Discovered my Secret Powers by Keri Smith

How to Create Space by Grace Kerina on highly sensitive power

lady gaga and your dreams come true by Danielle LaPorte on White Hot Truth

Deconstruction… The Ultimate Writer’s Tool by Deborah Riley-Magnus on Writeaholic 

The Importance of Structure – guest post by Sophie Johnson on Iain Broome’s Write for Your Life 

How to Master the Creative Writing Process by Melissa Donovan on Writing Forward

The editing list that will turn a draft into a strong manuscript by Michael Pokocky on Red Room blog

Write What You Don’t Know by Steven Pressfield 

Coming to a Bad End: Rabbit-Hats, Cliffbangers, and Other Cheats by John Robert Marlow on the Self Editing Blog 

Story Psych: A Semi-Scientific Look at What Makes a Good Story by Megan Crewe on Tor.com 
Part 2 
Part 3 

How to Channel Passion in Your Writing by Donald Maass on Writer’s Digest

Annie Dillard and the Writing Life by Alexander Chee on The Morning News

And my own favorite post from 2009? Without a doubt, it would be the 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel series I ran in October.

lara
My Story Writer
www.mywritingsoftware.com